American pop star Taylor Swift, who shook the music industry with a phenomenally successful tour, was named Time magazine’s 2023 Person of the Year on Wednesday.
“Much of what (Taylor) Swift has accomplished in 2023 is immeasurable… She is committed to giving value to the dreams, feelings and experiences of people, especially women, who are “felt neglected and regularly underestimated,” said the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Sam Jacobs.
At 33, the country singer adds a new distinction to a long list of successes and records. Taylor Swift already has a career spanning seventeen years, thirteen albums sold more than fifty million copies, six world tours and more than 500 musical awards, including twelve Grammy Awards. She has placed twelve albums at the top of the Billboard, which is the reference ranking. With her latest album, Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), she dethroned Barbara Streisand in July 2023.
From pop star to 50 million records sold, she found herself at the top of the box office in one weekend! Released on October 13 in France and the United States, the recording of his tour The Eras Tour filled cinemas as much as the monumental “tour”, with 150 dates on five continents, on which the artist embarked until in 2024.
For the past year, she has also distinguished herself by criticizing the ticketing juggernaut Ticketmaster for the cacophony around ticket sales for her tour, which led the platform, often criticized for its monopoly position, to have to explain itself before the American Congress.
Time points out that the interpreter of Shake It Off and Cruel Summer, who succeeds Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, is “the first personality from the world of arts to be named person of the year for his success as an artist”. The editor-in-chief of Time points out that the distinction often goes to heads of state or titans of industry, but “Taylor Swift has found a way to transcend borders and be a source of light.”
“For building a world that was her own but made room for so many people, for making her story a global legend, for bringing joy to a society that desperately needed it, Taylor Swift is the person of the year 2023 of Time”, also writes Sam Jacobs.
Time published a list of finalists on Monday: alongside Taylor Swift, were Russian and Chinese leaders Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, British King Charles III, US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, as well as the boss by OpenAI Sam Altman, the Hollywood strikers, the prosecutors who indicted Donald Trump and… the character of Barbie, at the center of the cinema hit of the year.
